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| Category: Memoir |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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This is a true-life memoir of defiant endurance through cruelty and traumatic loss, leading to ultimate survival. The author presents his father’s ordeals during five and a half years of Nazi captivity during the Holocaust. Included is a section of his mother’s similar experiences, although limited by her difficulty in discussing this topic.
As the title infers, throughout he perceives the aura of his late grandma’s spirit protecting him with her angelic wings, as vowed in an early vision. Besides the brutal forced labor, extreme hunger, and massive life upheaval, there are numerous near-death escapes. He consistently feels luck being steered his way. With this fortune, perseverance, and daring he ends up as the lone survivor of his large family. A similar outcome applies to the author’s mother. Narrated from a first-person viewpoint it depicts forced migrations, Warsaw ghetto internment, and an ever worsening struggle to survive. Finally he must endure a series of Nazi camps for years until Russian liberation brings the war’s end. He becomes aware of the complete loss of family, being alone in the world in his early twenties. Finally free, DP camp life offers renewal, marriage, USA migration, and starting over.
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| About the Author | |
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Early in life, the author realizes the extreme uniqueness of his family and their special circumstances; their speaking accent, foreign language use at home, and a remarkable total absence of any immediate relatives, including grandparents, aunts or uncles. Moreover, all their close circle of family friends have these almost identical characteristics. He realizes that they all come from a very special shared history which has selected them with these attributes. Over his growing years, his father narrates the many stories and events which gave birth to these peculiarities. He thus learns of the cataclysmic Holocaust experiences and travails which his parents and their gang of friends have endured. These trials and tribulations become embedded in his soul. While his father discusses these prolifically, his mother holds back with obvious pain. Her stories are mostly kept locked inside, presenting only limited fragments. With this background, the author has endeavored to memorialize for posterity the narrative of these monumental occurrences paying tribute to his parents and their tenacious endurance. |